Editorial: Transportation board proved its incompetence

Editorial

Posted: Monday, March 02, 2009

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Whether the state Department of Transportation board's decision late last week to fire DOT Commissioner Gena Evans has laid the groundwork for a reorganization of the state's transportation bureaucracy or not, it did once and for all paint the board as a group, at least as it is presently constituted, that ought to have nothing to do with transportation planning or construction anywhere in the state.

In firing Evans, the eight members of the 13-member board who ousted her have deprived the state of a competent and hard-charging administrator, one who had undertaken the long-needed task of unraveling the Gordian knot of road projects - in various stages of completion or planning - and funding issues that had come to define the DOT as one of the state's most dysfunctional bureaucracies.

It is almost laughable that, following their Thursday decision to fire Evans, some board members contended they had done so because road projects under the DOT's direction had been brought nearly to a standstill by the commissioner, who had served in the post only since late 2007.

Putting the brakes on DOT projects, at least until she could get a handle on exactly what was going on around the state in terms of whether those projects made sense and were cost-effective, is exactly what Evans needed to do as head of the transportation agency. How else was she - and, by extension, the state she was appointed to serve - supposed to gauge where the DOT stood, and whether it was headed in a reasonable and defensible direction?

It most assuredly was not Evans' fault that this state had fallen victim to a DOT board whose members took a parochial view of transportation issues. Because they are appointed by state legislative caucuses to represent each of the state's 13 congressional districts, the DOT board had become a group whose members advocated what were essentially local road projects, eschewing a wider look at transportation policy.

In short, then, it was the very board that fired Evans that had created the problems and issues she was trying to unravel.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who championed Evans for the DOT post, was right to level withering criticism at the board, saying in a statement that the board's decision to fire Evans "proved that a majority of its members are more concerned with personal vendettas and politics than delivering value to citizens in transportation."

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle was similarly and correctly blunt in saying that "(e)very Georgian ... should be outraged" at Evans' firing.

Of course, Perdue and Cagle have some ulterior motive for blasting the DOT board. They, along with House Speaker Glenn Richardson, are pushing legislation that would radically change the state's transportation bureaucracy. Their proposal would replace the DOT board with an 11-member State Transportation Authority - a merger of the State Road and Tollway Authority and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority - whose members would be appointed by the sitting governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker.

As this newspaper noted in its Feb. 23 editorial ("New state transportation scheme not impressive"), there is plenty to worry about with the proposal, which concentrates power for setting the direction of state transportation in the hands of just three elected officials. But, seeing what the various permutations of the DOT board have done through the years with regard to transportation projects and policy around the state, it is clearly time for some fundamental change in how those responsibilities are handled.

One bright spot in all this is that Evans remains executive director of the State Road and Tollway Authority. If Perdue, Cagle and Richardson do get their proposed reorganization of the state transportation bureaucracy through the legislature, they should make sure that Evans has a leadership position within it.